Your letter found your mother on a sick bed, unable to receive any intelligence, and, as we knew from whom the packet came, I opened it. Its contents will account for the style of this epistle. You are no longer a son of mine. Two years ago, when you brought the disgrace on your name of having been expelled ignominiously from college, I almost vowed never to acknowledge you as a son of mine. I relented, however, and took you again into favor. I see now how useless it was. Again you have brought shame on my gray hairs; and I now make the determination to disown you wholly. Enclosed is a thousand dollars, for I will not send you penniless on the world. Let me never again hear from you. Change your name, since you will dishonor the one I bear, and remember that your own folly has cut loose every tie betwixt you and George L. Vernon.” The letter fell from the hands of the young man as he ceased reading, and for some moments, without uttering a word, he gazed on it as it lay on the floor at his feet. In that minute how his whole past life rushed through his memory! He thought of his infancy; his early childhood; the rooms where he played; his little sister; his mother; the servants; every old familiar place and thing, all now shut out to him forever. Had he deserved to be treated with such harshness? His passion blinded him as he said: “No! I have not deserved it. I will be under no obligations to one who can thus heartlessly cast me off. He disowns me—does he? Let it be. Never will I sue for a favor again at any of their hands. From this day forth they shall be to me as the dead.” Shall we follow him through his career of subsequent desperation and eventual profligacy, or shall we at once draw to a close? More than a year had passed since Vernon had been disowned by his parent, and he was now an outcast, and almost penniless. In all that time he had heard nothing of home. He had seen, in the interval, every variety of life. The gaming table had been his principal resort, for after having, with the remittance made to him by his father, discharged his debts of honor, he had so little left that he saw no other resource from starvation. The vicissitudes of a gambler’s life are well known; the inevitable result—poverty—is ever the same. By the time a twelvemonth had elapsed, Vernon was almost penniless.